With Halloween less than a week away and Christmas / holiday decorations already on sale at most stores it is almost time to say goodbye to summer. Almost meaning after one last summer fling event (Summer Nights Finale - which Amoeba has been supporting since the series began) that takes place tomorrow (Friday, Oct 26th) at the Oakland Museum of California from 4pm until 11:45 pm.

This special multi-faceted OMCA event not only offers museum goers a nice farewell to summer but also a hello / early taste of Halloween with what the curators at OMCA promise will be an eclectic evening featuring Days of the Dead tours, monster books, home movies, and a cult horror cinema classic - and some of it interactive too.

          

                                      HearHere from Hear Here on Vimeo.

The myriad of educational fun for all ages that is Summer Nights Finale includes a tour of Forgotten Stories, Remarkable Lives: Días de los Muertos 2012 and a meet-and-greet with the artists responsible for the exhibition (5pm in The Great Hall), an almost all ages event dance class to learn the moves for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" for ages 4 and up (7:30pm to 8pm at the OMCA Gift Shop), and a sneak peek of the (currently closed to the public) Gallery of California Natural Sciences with artist Helena Keeffe on hand to give a guided tour of the fort exhibit that she co-created with Oakland YMCA families.

Join Amoeba Music and the Oakland Museum of California for the latest installment of Summer

Despite his deep resume and extensive, impressive body of work, revered & highly accomplished Chicago born, Oakland based graphic novelist Daniel Clowes, whose work is defined by its dark humored focus on the underdog, is finally getting the kind of exposure he has long deserved but for some reason eluded - until now.

That successful & prolific career spans two-plus decades in the alternative comic book arts world racking up such accolades as several prestigious Harvey Awards for his pioneering comic Eightball, his work appearing in the New Yorker, a 2011 PEN career achievement award for the darkly fun The Death-Ray (about an orphaned teen named Andy who discovers that, when he smokes cigarettes, he morphs into a superhero with special powers), plus the 2001 Oscar nomination for the film adaptation of his book Ghost World.

Six years ago his Art School Confidential was adapted to film and reportedly a film version of his book Wilson is currently in the works. But it is only now in 2012 that Daniel Clowes is finally getting his due with a large scale retrospective of his life's work at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) that opens this weekend and runs there for four months.

With the exception of a (smaller scale compared to OMCA) solo show that Los Angeles' Richard Heller Gallery hosted for Clowes nine years ago, this OMCA retrospective will be Clowes first large scale, major museum exhibition focusing solely on his art and in great depth. Titled Modern Cartoonist, it opens this Saturday (April 14th) and runs through August 12th and will exhibit one hundred different pieces of the artist's work spanning the past 23 years.

"I thought there would be maybe a couple of hundred people here and that it would be a pretty good event but, damn, I didn't think there would be this many people here and that it would this great a party. Hell yeah!," exclaimed Dan K -- one of the many attendees at last Friday's East Bay Express party.

The Oakland biker/hip-hop artist (who a few years back had a feature on him in the East Bay Express) was excitedly shouting over the music coming from the main stage at the Oakland Museum of California, where the independent East Bay weekly was hosting its "Old School" themed "Best of the East Bay" free party. Meanwhile, behind him, one of the hella fun night's many performers, longtime Berkeley ska group The Uptones (pictured above), ripped into their appropriately old school hit "Out to Sea."   

"Crazy....in a good way," laughed Amoeba Music's Naomi about the scene. She and fellow Amoebite Rachael were kept extremely busy tending to the long line of music fans who patiently waited for their turn to spin-to-win prizes including CDs, DVDs, and lots of Amoeba swag, including bags, hoodies, and turntable slip mats. (Amoeba was one of the main sponsors of the event.) A little later, headlining act Flipper was scheduled to sign autographs at the Amoeba table.